


Keep grinning to a minimum, please

by calathea



Category: I Want To Go Home! - Korman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about Mike, Rudy thought in fractured moments, was that he really couldn't hide how he felt. If you weren't clueless, you could read every thought that crossed his mind, figure out the way he felt about you from the way he stood and the way he moved and the kind of smile he gave you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep grinning to a minimum, please

Staggering in from a lacrosse game, one Tuesday after school, Rudy deposited his 'Winning Team' medal with his father, who was thrilled, his laundry with his mother, who was not, and growled at Jeff as they passed on the landing.

"What?" Jeff yelled after him, "I only asked if you had fun!"

Rudy slammed his door, dropped onto his bed with a thud, and stared at the ceiling. In the room next door, Jeff turned up his stereo. He was playing harpsichord music. Outside, his dad whistled _We Are The Champions_. Rudy pulled his cellphone out of his pocket.

_Family insane. Must escape_, he typed, and sent it to Mike.

The reply was almost instant. _Me 2. V has friends over. Lots of screaming, mudpacks, scariness. Mt me in park in 5?_

Rudy would have smiled, but he'd given up smiling when he was eleven and a half. _Yes_, he sent back, briefly, instead. Mike just sent back a _:)_ in reply.

He probably could have gone through the house, but that would have meant running the gauntlet of his mother ("Why did you bring home so much mud? Did you think we needed extra?"), his father ("Nice piece of metal you brought home today, son. It'll be an Olympic medal one of these days, eh?") and his brother ("I need someone to test my new invention! You might want to put on this tinfoil helmet though!"). He exited via his bedroom window, walked across the garage roof, and executed a neat jump onto a patch of grass at a blind corner of the house, before jogging towards the park he and Mike frequented when they wanted to escape their families.

'Park' was actually something of an overstatement. It was really just a lumpy and misshapen bit of land, squeezed between two neighbouring housing developments, and bordered by the high fences of the surrounding properties at all sides. It boasted two swings, one of which hung crookedly due to the differing lengths of chain holding it up, while the other had an unfortunate tendency to flip unexpectedly when you sat on it, dumping the unwary onto the ground beneath. The other amenities included a polka-dotted teeter totter in colours so revolting it made a person sea-sick to see it in motion, and a large sandbox entirely lacking in sand. Throw in a lot of gloomy old trees that blocked out the sun, a vicious family of woodchucks in one corner, and Rudy and Mike were usually the only people desperate enough to go there.

Rudy turned the corner and spotted Mike leaning pseudo-casually against a tree. Rudy eyed him as he walked over. Mike looked nervous, he decided, but mostly in a happy and excited sort of way. He allowed himself a small smirk, and tried to ignore the tremor of excitement in his own hands and the way his stomach seemed to leap up to his throat.

"Hey," Mike said, grinning at him as he approached. "Oh my god, my sister had about thirteen million of her friends over. I was going deaf from the screaming."

Rudy raised an eyebrow at him. "Thirteen million?" he asked, mildly. "Suddenly Jeff, even with his death-defying science projects, doesn't seem too bad."

Mike laughed. "Maybe it just _seemed_ like thirteen million," he admitted. "It's hard to tell one from another when they've got all that green goopy stuff on their faces. It could have been the same three girls over and over."

He shrugged, and then fell silent. Rudy watched with fascination as Mike shifted from foot to foot, fidgeted with the cuffs of his long-sleeved t-shirt and took a deep breath. "Um," said Mike, and then stepped in a little closer to Rudy and, resting his hands lightly on Rudy's shoulders, kissed him carefully on the lips. Rudy barely had a chance to react before Mike stepped back again, his hands dropping away. "Um," he said again, his face flushing pink. "Hi."

Rudy glanced around quickly. There wasn't much chance they would be seen, but he reached out anyway to take Mike's hand and tug him towards a small stand of trees in the middle of the park. Between the wide trunks of the trees and the dense leaves, it was the most private part of the park.

Mike followed with only a surprised: "What…?"

Rudy just tightened his grip, pulling Mike along and then turning them around until Mike's back was pressed against the trunk of the largest tree. "Hi," he said, crowding in close to Mike.

Mike grinned at him, his expression a goofy mix of shy and delighted. Rudy kissed him quickly before Mike could either giggle or move away, letting his fingers settle at Mike's waist.

The thing about Mike, Rudy thought in fractured moments, was that he really couldn't hide how he felt. If you weren't clueless, you could read every thought that crossed his mind, figure out the way he felt about you from the way he stood and the way he moved and the kind of smile he gave you.

Rudy wasn't clueless.

Mike, on the other hand, while as opaque as a windowpane, _was_ clueless. Rudy had had to wait half a _year_ for Mike to notice they were dating and make a goddamn move already. He couldn't entirely remember just now, with Mike's fingers threaded into his hair, why he'd waited for Mike. They could have been doing this for months, rather than just three days.

Mike broke away to breathe, pressing his forehead against Rudy's. "Hi," he said again. "You seem kind of, um, distracted."

His voice rose a little at the end of the sentence, making him sound uncertain. "I was thinking," Rudy said, more quickly than usual, "About the last three days."

Mike looked doubtful. "Um," he said. "In a good way, right?"

Rudy raised an eyebrow. "You were _there_ last night?" he asked, but he was surprised by his own voice, at the way his normal sarcasm was muffled by… something else.

Mike flushed very pink. "Um," he said again, but he nodded, and his arms crept around Rudy's waist again.

Rudy _definitely_ remembered last night. Mike's parents had been out with Vicky at her latest dance recital. They'd made plans over a week ago to get together, watch some movie with a lot of explosions, and eat junk food. That was _before_ the events of The Party though.

Rudy didn't usually give adolescent social events capital letters. Rudy didn't even usually _go_ to adolescent social events. After all, he'd had a _reputation_ at his old school. When they moved though and he'd started at Mike's school, that all changed. Mike, it turned out, in his natural high school habitat, was friendly, a little dorky, a little sweet, and consequently, something almost but not quite like popular.

Rudy, who'd always kind of thought of Mike as his own personal discovery, had been taken aback at how much he didn't approve of Mike having other friends. But even though he'd single-handedly made half his class at his old high school cry in _one day_, Rudy found he couldn't bring himself to be mean to Mike's friends in case it upset Mike. That was pretty much his first clue that Mike was a little more than his best friend.

Mike, though, didn't catch on until nearly six months later. Enlightenment had struck, somewhat inconveniently, outside The Party while they were trapped together in a very small space between a fence and a garden shed at Cheryl Watson's house by a large, unfriendly-looking dog, with only a spatula and a can of beans as weapons, and the distant strains of a remix of the Birdie Song on the stereo.

It was lucky Rudy had decided to have no romance in his soul since the day after he turned seven, or he might have been disappointed by the soundtrack to his first major love scene.

The circumstances leading up to their incarceration between the fence and the shed didn't really merit repeated contemplation, Rudy had decided. On the other hand, Rudy had been contemplating the way Mike's body had felt pressed against him (the little hitch in Mike's breathing when Rudy's hand, the one _not_ holding the spatula, had brushed over Mike's lower back; the way Mike had kissed him, clumsy and urgent, until Mike had distracted himself by dropping the beans on his own foot) more or less hourly ever since.

And then there was last night.

Mike was still flushed at the reminder of their most recent activities, and he hadn't been the one who'd had to walk home in damp, uncomfortable jeans. Rudy was just glad he'd perfected the over-the-garage-roof route to his bedroom in reverse.

"We perhaps lacked finesse last night," Rudy admitted now, his fingers skating under Mike's loose t-shirt, "I am confident we'll improve with practice."

"I can do practice," Mike said, grinning lopsidedly, and Rudy kissed him again. He let his fingertips creep under the waistband of Mike's jeans, and Mike made a little moaning noise.

Rudy would have cheered if his lips hadn't been busy with Mike's neck, and if he hadn't decided cheering was beneath his dignity at the age of six and a quarter (he could give you the date. It was a Wednesday.) Rudy _approved_ of that noise. Hearing it, and others like it, while they lay in a tangled, over-warm heap on Mike's mom's living room sofa, skin-to-skin from the waist up, had been the cause of Rudy's uncomfortable walk home last night.

He slid his hand round to the placket of Mike's jeans, and Mike moaned again. "I might not… I might not _survive_ practice," Mike panted, letting his head fall onto Rudy's shoulder. "But oh yeah, I can do it."

"I know CPR," Rudy replied, and Mike laughed. Rudy approved of that too, of the way Mike's laugh hadn't changed, even if they were now the kind of friends who made out in parks and undid one another's jeans.

Mike was wearing black watch tartan boxers, and Rudy had maybe spent too much time, in the last six months, trying to catch glimpses of the sliver of skin on display when Mike flailed his arms around enthusiastically, because they seemed almost familiar. Nothing else was, really. Not the angle, or the heat of Mike's body, or Mike's hitching, incredulous gasps. "Rudy! Holy fuck, Rudy."

It was all kinds of awkward, actually, and Rudy wondered, in a tiny corner of his mind, why his manual dexterity should choose now to be less than perfect. Mike though didn't seem inclined to be critical. Mike didn't seem inclined to be coherent, either, so Rudy just touched him and watched his face and pulled him in close when Mike sagged against him, boneless and breathless, with another of those moans.

Mike still had his face pressed into the hollow of Rudy's neck when he started fumbling at Rudy's belt and the button of his jeans. "Jesus," he murmured into Rudy's t-shirt, "Buttons on other people are hard."

"We can do," Rudy started, and then stopped when Mike's hand slid between his own shorts (green, no pattern) and skin. "We can…"

Mike's voice was like his hands: a little rough, a little urgent. "We can?" he said.

"Remedial buttons," Rudy blurted, distracted, "Something. I don't know."

Mike laughed and he kissed Rudy, and Rudy wondered when Mike got so much better at co-ordination than him, because Rudy could suddenly barely remember how to breathe and kiss and stay upright at the same time. Mike's hands were hot, and when he broke out of the kiss to whisper, close to Rudy's ear: "Wanna put my mouth on you, one day," Rudy was gone, his mind a white-out blank of _mikemikemikemikemikemikemike_.

* * *

It was a shitty park, Rudy thought, as they rinsed off their sticky hands in the water fountain, but he kind of liked the trees. "You can be up against one then, next time," Mike grumbled.

Rudy brushed some slivers of bark from Mike's t-shirt. "Yeah?" he said, and hoped he didn't sound as eager out loud as he was in his head.

Mike blushed, and grinned. "Practice," he reminded Rudy. His expression was bright and certain, and Mike was _slow_, oh my god, but Mike was also kind of brave, and maybe it was just as well that one of them was.

Rudy had decided to keep grinning to a minimum when he was nine and two thirds, but he couldn't stop himself now.


End file.
